RESUMO
BACKGROUND: In order to offer wide and efficient health care to patients, Burkina Faso has instituted the syndromic approach to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) since 1996. The current assessment has been carried out in view of measuring the degree of application of this approach in the management of the STIs in the health centres of the country. The assessment should specifically allow to: i) analyse the quality of the clinical health care of the patients coming in the health services with STI symptoms;ii) to determine the proportions of those patients to whom the care-provider give basic counselling on the use of condoms and the information of their sexual partners. METHODS: The study has been carried out from the 1(st) to the 28(th) July 2001 in all the 53 health districts and the two national hospitals of Burkina Faso. A one-day cross-section survey per health centres was used. The data were collected from a direct observation of the provider-patient relationship; and the handling of the anamnesis, the physical examination, the diagnosis and the prescriptions were analysed. RESULTS: During the survey, 358 patients had been consulted in the health centres. Only 4% of the patients who came in the health centres with STI or for STI consultation had been assessed and treated in accordance with national algorithm or WHO recommendations (Prevention indicator n degrees 6=4%); and 13% of those who came to consult with or for STI in the health centres had received basic counselling on condoms and the notification to their sexual partners (Prevention indicator n degrees 7=13%). CONCLUSION: These prevention indicators remain of a very weak level, showing therefore a poor quality of the management of STIs. Meanwhile, they show the areas of deficiencies on which a supervision and a recycling of the providers might bear.